Second Line Center

Dylan Cozens can stay. Love watching him play.

Of course we needed what looks like a significant injury to a significant player. Of course.

That and the subtraction of Tage Thompson

Our 5 on 5 has been atrocious. There is zero leadership on this team. You can't look at guys that have been here at the forefront of losing and all around horrendous hockey teams and take them seriously as leaders. Reinhart. Eichel. Risto. Nothing against them as players. Together, the loser runs too deep now. ROR winning the Cup might have actually sent this group into an irreversible tailspin. "See what happens when you leave here? And who the heck thought this Tage Thompson was good??" Whole thing has to get blown up.

Getting his resume polished and gaining some NHL front office experience, future Sabres GM Michael Peca is now overseeing Player Development for the Capitals. That's all I got. Wake me up when that happens.

This will be realized in the next 12-18 months. You'll hear people in the media around here say "you don't trade a talent like that and improve plus he will thrive elsewhere." Yea? And? He isn't thriving here. And if he no longer believes anything can be won here what good is he? I clearly don't see a roster rallying around the play of the Captain oh going on 4 years now. As I said a few weeks ago. If I'm GM, literally every single player is on the table. Except Risto. He's playing the game we've been waiting for him to play for years. That's hard to come by in this league of "everyone plays the same dull system bc the players know their analytics have to matter at contract time." Its a joke. This team is soft. Fragile. The loser runs deep thru the core. And that includes Hall and Skinner. I don't know why Staal is here. I like Cozens a lot tho. Unfortunately tough to blow it up in the middle of the pandemic era. No minors to truly scout. Possibly no draft? Disaster. The only thing that's going to continue longer then Covid will be this franchise's cluelessness.

There will always be carriers. There will always be cases. 330 million are never getting vaccinated let alone 7 billion thus the virus is never going away. I said stay home till you get vaccinated. Simple. Shelter yourself in place. "Being extra careful" isn't what we signed up for and if that's the case why is anything open anywhere indoors?

Remember when they used to count people going into Wegmans or Wal-Mart? Lol no one is doing that anymore. Why shouldn't we be allowing everyone with at least first dose vaccine in? What are we waiting for? Just my opinion bc I think we need to be at the point if you don't have the vaccine you shelter in place and avoid people until you get it. Should have it by June at the latest. Simple ask since we've all been asked to do this for almost 1 year and counting.

I'm going to keep it to movies in my lifetime post 1978 and across different genres: Back to the Future Casino Royale Predator The Dark Knight Pulp Fiction Superbad Die Hard Halloween Logan Lucky Zero Dark Thirty

There are zero post 2008 and my God just typing that is infuriating.

Feels like they're reaching to get something to galvanize them other then pride and win at all costs.

I watched all 3 seasons over the summer in subtitles. Awesome awesome show. Always watch the foreign stuff with subtitles. I can't explain it. It loses something with English dubbing. You can't understand them and you're reading the translation, but the authenticity of the acting is there and you can tell. Or something.....

Are they positive or not? I'd think this would be a big deal if contact tracing would be shown to be in game---which I highly doubt.

On ice/locker room leadership - cool we brought in Staal, but it's just not that simple. And this is tough bc we're in middle of covid protocols making interaction and team bonding near impossible. Goaltending Coaching In order those are the biggest problems in this organization.

No it's not too optimistic my problem is those core guys (Jack, Sam, VO, McCabe, Risto) are now in their mid 20s and haven't even played in a playoff game. Burn all the analytics. They don't matter. The computer isn't going to tell you how to get rid of this Culture of Losing that is now entering year 7 for guys like Samson, Risto and basically Eichel to. I saw that tweet with the pic of Jack basically stopping in that last shift stick on his knees. That's the captain. I don't care that the game is probably over. That's not a good look and it's a little thing that speaks to something deeper. None of that is to say I think Jack is a bad dude...he's probably great with the guys. I'm sure they like him. I guess. But he was given the C way too early. I can't reach any other conclusion my evidence is this team is in the midst of a historic playoff drought and him and Sam are at the center of it. With what we pay them, and the joke that is Skinner (also a perennial loser), explain to me how this team is supposed to get better? It can't. Trades need to happen. I'm listening to all offers for those 3. I'm building around a new core and supplementing it with what I can get for them.

I'm well into wading the waters of trading Jack and pretty much everyone but Cozens. Literally everyone including that other "generational" player we're ruining in Dahlin. We've run out of coaches to blame.

I remembered we couldn't pass on: Reinhart Nylander Casey That or we "loved" the picks and Samson was a cant miss #1 C. I'm glad we passed on the 5'9 guy for someone that appears to be developing well and can put the puck in the net.

Not sure if this was mentioned in the GDT, but I believe it was on the Caps game tying goal. You could just see OV had another gear going... could sense that if he fore checked hard enough they were going to score. Risto had the puck along the boards and OV made a play on him to keep it in the zone. In that moment I thought "that right there is the difference between Risto being just a good D-man, and not an elite one. He's never going to be elite. I think we all know this. But he had to get that puck out of there. The Caps cycled it around another 15 seconds and boom tie game. Like almost everyone for the right deal he is 100 percent expendable. Am I remembering this sequence right I'm 99.9 percent sure it was Risto with a chance to get it out but essentially OV slapped him and said I'll take that from here thank you very much.

Samson isnt worth more than 6-7 mill per year. What does he do that's special? Act as Jack's Uber? Over 60 points once in his career. He plays with Eichel and has had more than 40 assists once. Epic epic 2nd overall pick bust. Nice player. Nice piece on a 3rd line of a great team. Should have been traded last summer. But our GM probably lost any guts he had left after ROR fleecing.

Seriously, has firing Housley improved this team at all? The only thing of significance that has changed is Skinner and Dahlin are worse. That's it. J-Bott fired him and that puts the owners evaluating him (should be a team president to evaluate the GM but hey Terry likes hockey so he's qualified) bc they had to approve it and that had to mean at the time JBott was safe for more than one season----what coach takes this job knowing the GM is on the hot seat and your roster was trash? No one worth hiring. So he takes a huge gamble. Ralph wants back in the league and is intrigued. But Ralph is out of his league and JBott is as good as gone and so will 1/3 of the roster.

2 top 6 forwards that includes a Center. A legit NHL goalie. The fact Botts hasn't gotten this done is beyond insane to me.

1. These guys are good 2. Drury goal 3. May Day 4. Hannan's goal 5. Every ridiculous Hasek save. "Makes the save" just had something extra when it was Hasek. It was as if RJ was telling us don't worry he's got this.

22 minutes TOI last night. Settling into a shutdown role with Parayko. Plus 5 with 1 assist in 4 games.

Which is the exact opposite place we were a month ago. I think they've been good for chunks of the season with just bad to terrible goaltending. I think we'd be much closer to in the playoffs if these guys felt great about the guy they have between the pipes.